"New Song on SoundCloud 'Come Along II' in Open G Tuning"

Seagull !2-String Guitar Open G Tuning

 Come Along II - I recommend headphones or a good set of speakers to listen to this song.

https://soundcloud.com/gatzka-music/come-along-ii

New Song - Better Left Unsaid

Better Left Unsaid by Gatzka Music

Texture + House + People - Digital Collage - Dover Publications

I made this Digital Collage in PhotoPaint using a textured background from Mayangs texture library of rusted metal.

I selected a number of pieces of Dover Publications clip art from my samplers and added the house, car with driver and passengers, a romantic couple, a cat, a crane, and some flowers. I topped it off with the jewelery like corners.

I used a combination of Object properties like Multiply, Difference, etc, to add the pieces one by one. I also used the erase tool on some of them to maintain their color but get rid of extraneous backgrounds.

I resampled the larger file to 1200x900 to display here on the blog. I added a light brown 10 pixel border to the image to finish it.

Yesterday late afternoon I got my 12-string guitar out and placed my Seymour Duncan Woody pickup on it and plugged in for some Blues Rock playing. I laid down a E A D track of Blues rhythm and then picking a Heavy guitar setting, using my Gearbox software selections, for the lead I played along with the track in Audacity through my Toneport from Line 6.

I just put the track on loop and kept playing for about an hour and a half improvising some Blues lead. I had a ball being loud and using feedback and lead notes through my sound system turned up.

In the end I didn't record anything but I certainly enjoyed myself.

Listening --- Blues Fun One --- Kirk Mathew Gatzka

Rust Upon Rust - Digital Collage

I really love the color of rust and this image demon-
strates that. I used a rust back-
ground from CGTextures.com and combined a rusty, very old style tractor, a rusted truck, a rusted farm implement, plus some Dover Clipart to create this Rust Upon Rust image.

I used PhotoPaint to combine all the mentioned pieces into this collage of rust. I added some clipart hands with old mechanisms at odd places to add some humor to this piece. Look closely at the larger image for the details.

I also found a bit of time to practice playing the 12-string and 6-string guitar which was so much fun I recorded a couple of covers of tunes. I have always liked JJ Cale's "After Midnight" with its chunk a chunk rhythm so I attempted this one for an enjoyable time. Using Audacity I recorded 3 tracks. Two (guitar and vocals) with my microphone only and a Detroit RNB Vocal setting in Gearbox. I put these opposite each other in the right and left channels. Then using a Heavy Guitar setting I added the third track of my attempt at lead playing, not my strong point. I used the 12-string guitar for this recording.

I have some Kenny Chesney (Live) songs on my PC so I looked for some of them and found "Live Those Songs" Tab and chords and lyrics. After some practice I adapted the song to my style a bit and recorded that using the 12-string and vocals. I used the same vocal setting and put the two tracks in the right and left channels. In the middle I messed up the chord structure, but since I only share this with family and friends I didn't bother to re-record the second channel. I know, I'm lazy!

All in all I had fun doing some digital art and recording which I haven't had time to do in quite a while. It was great fun!

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Listening to: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - After Midnight Cover
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Classic Roadster - Songwriting

Continuing with the Custom Cars motif I have shared another Classic Car a Roadster. This was also painted in ArtRage the oil painting emulation program. Based upon a photograph taken by my son Keir M Gatzka.

I did try to sell these images as greeting cards when we had the Omniartz website (name now in other hands). I garnered some interest in the images. People identify with recognizable things like cars. And many like custom cars.

I recorded my new chord progression with the Toneport UX1 and Gearbox. I used two guitar models for the rhythm. One with quite a bit of treble for a tangy sound and one with a bass tone called Archtop Jazz guitar.

I added some simple lead (a Jimi Hendrix fuzz model) playing to it and it sounds very nice. I still have to work out the melody and lyrics. May take some time as it is not coming easy - some songs you really have to work at. I may need to go to the lyrics site for some ideas if nothing gels soon. A little help with a theme or title or chorus would be a great help.

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Now playing on Windows Media Player: Inxs - Mediate
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Dodge Truck Collage

We found this old Dodge Truck on one of our drives last summer. I had just gotten my new Canon XTi and I took dozens of photographs of it.

Many of these I reworked as painterly images. I also had a few forest photographs as well. I did some manipulations on various ones and left some of them untouched.

Using Picasa 3 I created a large collage from these works. I resized it in PhotoPaint for display here.

Take a closer look by opening this image for the details. You will see the painted ones and manipulated pieces mingled with the untouched photographs. The Centerpiece being a painted image using Painter 8.

By the Way, Corel Corp is having it's 20th year anniversary and has a deal on an Intuos Wacom Tablet with their Graphics Suite X4. It is a great deal and I thought that it would be good to pass on. Click on my "Corel" listing below to go to the homepage to read about it.

I recommend Corel products though I am not employed or affiliated with them. It is my many years of experience using their products that are a great alternative to Adobe's price wise. I do own Photoshop 7 but it is on my Mac G4 without a tablet so I don't use it as often as I would if I had a Wacom tablet on the G4. Painting and doing graphics with a mouse is something I am not really good at.

I just added a list of sites that are my favorites. It is just a beginning list so feel free to take a look at the sites listed. I am not affilated with any of them, they all are useful for me in my digital visual artwork and music recording.

Two Trees with Mountains

Here is a photograph taken with my Canon Rebel XTi while visiting Alaska. I used the AF with Landscape selected. I am still learning this camera so many of my current photos are an automatic setting, changing only from portrait to macro to landscape, etc.

It's versatility amazes me and I am very content with it's quality and the images I get from it.

I have been using my Toneport UX1 quite a bit for writing and recording songs and doing some covers. It really pushes the envelope of my musical abilities. I haven't played much in groups so it is really interesting to get some real drum loops off of the net and play along with them to create songs with a backbeat.

I have been able to download some free drum loops from Jim Dooley's site at http://www.dooleydrums.com/free_drum_loops.php. Using Audacity the free recording program I import the loop and create a string of them of up to 3-4 minutes or so and then try my best to match the beat, like using a metronome of a real drum sound. It is really enjoyable and a challenge for me. Jim offers all his drum loops and samples for about $29.99, which I hope to purchase some time. In the mean time - Thanks, Jim Dooley!

Toneport offers so many preset guitar styles that it is so much fun to select various types and explore what my acoustic 12-string guitar can sound like electronically. The accompanying software Gearbox has many presets of styles and mix and match amplifier presets that you can create some really wayout sounds with an acoustic guitar with a Woody Seymour Duncan pickup stuck in the soundhole.

It is really just plain fun!

Guitar Montage

Here is a montage I did using Corel's PhotoPaint. The 12-string guitar in the center is mine and this started out as a photo of it.

I found various guitar pictures and blended them in using object properties Multiply to get the transparency look.

I just finished doing an audio CD of 16 of my Toneport creations, along with some songs that I covered using only the microphone and Audacity.

I Covered "Danger" by JJ Cale and Eric Clapton;" River of Light" by Gordon Lightfoot; and "No Mistake About It' by Gordon Lightfoot. Not using the Toneport made a drastic difference in sound quality. The TonePort pre-amps everything wonderfully and makes for a rich full sound. The recordings without it sound anemic.

I plan on sharing with my family and friends. Those that will listen to my efforts anyway, makes for a nice audience.

One thing I did do was demonstrate how I 'build' a song. I placed 3 versions of one song I named "Redeye Blues" about wanting to get home on a midnight flight and got get some real sleep in a bed. This along with some experiments with following a drum loop, which was like playing to a metronome but were samples of real drums.

Melodies and Lyrics are the hardest part, putting together chords is not that difficult. In some cases I used the 'Drop D Tuning' with the lower 'E' string tuned down to 'D'. It is great fun to use different tunings like that including DADGAD tuning. A real challenge.

On my way to Publishing a Cute face Came

This is the way I wanted to begin my new blog. A cute face and a friendly smile. The photograph is of my great, great niece, whom I recently visited. She is a joy and a natural Ham, loves to have her picture taken and will pose anytime.

I am currently testing out new hardware and software from Line 6 products. It is a Toneport UX1 with Gearbox software. It allows recording music to the computer. I play 12-string and 6-string guitars and do vocals. The software is like having a large selection of amplifiers for both vocals and guitar. It is very versatile.

I am using the free program Audacity to do the recording and creating of mp3s. I find it easy to use and very friendly.

The combination of these lets me push my creativity farther in the way of songwriting and styles of music.

My visual art is set aside for a while as I create music and try, try, try to make melodies and lyrics. I will be sharing more visuals as I can and perhaps post some of my older works here at a later date.

Combining drum loops, rhythm guitar, and beginning lead guitar is challenging and rewarding at the same time. I have been playing and singing since I was thirteen years old and I have never been the best lead player, more of a stylized rhythm guitar player. And I don't play bass so my pieces are without a bass line. But I am enjoying the opportunity to learn and create.

I don't want to be a star, I just do this for myself and family and friends. So don't expect anything in the way of my publishing my music, sorry!

I will use this blog to post images and perhaps some background on their creation and the tools that I used to do so. Along with my photography efforts I hope you find this to be an interesting read.